


Don't Talk to Strangers

by diablo77



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angst, Eventual Fluff, F/M, Infidelity, Porn With Plot, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-09
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-08-14 00:38:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 7,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7992154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diablo77/pseuds/diablo77
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas meets Meg at a party and begins an intense affair with repercussions that could shake both of their worlds apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote a short canonverse fic about this that I was too embarrassed to post, so I invented this AU instead. I just really like the idea of Cas stealing Meg from Lucifer.
> 
> Title is a Rick Springfield song about infidelity, because it fits and I like cheeky meta jokes.

           Cas knew how wrong it was, knew it never should have happened, even that first time. He’d never thought of himself as the kind of guy who would do that. But once it was happening, God, he just couldn’t stop. Even if he’d wanted to, he couldn’t.

            It all started at that damn house party his friends Sam and Dean had insisted on dragging him to.  Cas, personally, thought it was the kind of party they should have stopped going to a decade ago when they’d finished college, and to be completely honest he hadn’t even liked them back then. Most often, he would just find a quiet corner to read a book until whoever he’d come with was ready to go home. Now, Dean was probably hitting on some girl, and Sam was probably drunk, and he was well into his usual business of wishing he’d never agreed to come.

            At least, he’d found an empty back stoop leading to a mostly empty back yard, and in this way he felt like he’d hit the jackpot. He sat there alone for awhile, until he found himself joined by the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. It’s not that she was the supermodel type, but he’d never been into that anyway: she had a tiny body and a very round face, dark curls and a leather jacket over her party dress. He was instantly smitten. Maybe, he thought, sitting alone at parties wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

            “You’re avoiding everyone, too, huh,” she’d said, in a husky sardonic voice that gave him actual chills and made his cock twitch slightly when she sat down beside him.

            “I hate parties.”

            “God, me too. Next time I get dragged to something like this…” she trailed off, but shot him a devilish smile. They spent the next hour talking to each other, about anything and everything. She seemed to love to talk about how much she hated everyone, but in a way that was so funny and charismatic he couldn’t help feeling like he might be an exception. He told her all of the nerdy things about him that made him feel so out of place at parties like this, trying to play it for laughs the way she did, and it seemed to actually work: she was leaning on his shoulder as she laughed along, letting her hair tickle his neck and tease him into an undoing she didn’t even seem aware of.

            That first hour managed to pass without Cas noticing her wedding ring. When he did, he felt a phantom punch to his gut and instinctively scooted a few inches away. He was surprised he’d missed it; it was a gaudy thing that seemed unsuited to her even though he barely knew her. He wouldn’t have pegged her for that type.

            She noticed him noticing and said “Hey, it’s complicated.”

            Cas cocked his head at her, interested to hear more if she offered it, but at that moment she stiffened and moved a little further away herself. Through the open door, Cas saw a tall blond man pass by. “That’s him, isn’t it?” he said. “That’s your husband?”

            She nodded. Cas couldn’t help but think that if she had moved too, maybe he hadn’t misinterpreted her intentions after all. He tried to shake the thought, but it continued to nag in the back of his mind.

            “He’s not a horrible husband,” she said. “He doesn’t hurt me or anything. He’s just not particularly nice to me either.” Cas nodded, swallowing. “I could just… I could really use a friend.” She put her hand on his thigh in a way that was distinctly not friendly. Cas darted a glance over his shoulder through the door and saw that the man was long gone, as the woman’s hand – the one wearing the out-of-place ring – moved further inward.

            He could barely remember how they ended up alone in a room together – it was a blur of very intentional maneuvers that somehow still felt like it was all happening without his control. She was weaving through the crowd, darting sly glances behind her at him as he followed just far enough behind to avoid arousing suspicion. When she climbed the stairs, he waited at the base of them, long enough to ensure anyone who saw him would think he was going up there alone.

            She collided with him in the upstairs hall and shoved him through the door of one of the bedrooms, emphatically locking it behind her. Then he lost all control, pushing her up against the door and kissing her desperately, receiving twice as much passion in return. She lifted a leg and draped it over his thigh, and he ran his hand up it, feeling the soft cool skin under her skirt. She pulled back just long enough to strip his shirt off before pressing back into him. He was positioned between her legs, the hard insistence of his cock against her belly, and he knew she could feel how much he wanted this.

            He moved his hand further up under her skirt, moved her panties to the side and ran his fingers through the silky wet heat there. She moaned into his mouth, still kissing him, then pulled away and leaned in to his ear. “I want you to fuck me,” she whispered.

            Cas reached around her back and found her zipper, and her dress hit the floor. Standing there in her lacy black bra and matching, disheveled panties, she looked dazed for a moment before grabbing him and pulling him toward the bed, her hands tearing at his belt buckle. Sensing her impatience, he undid his pants himself and kicked them off along with his boxers, letting them puddle on the bedroom floor. He lifted her onto the bed and she fell back with a giggle, quickly shucking her panties and bra and spreading obscenely for him on the pillow.

            “Oh, God,” he whispered, crawling up her body to kiss down her neck, feeling her guide his head downward, toward her hardened nipples. He sucked them greedily and felt her arch up into his mouth, moaning just a little too loudly for comfort. “Shhh!” All he could think was that her husband was somewhere in this house, maybe right below them, and that made even her tiniest pleasure sounds seem deafening to him.

            She bit his shoulder to muffle the next wave of noises, and when he entered her, the pain was exquisite. He thrust into her in long, slow strokes, feeling her body quiver and writhe under him, until she dug in her nails in a way that seemed to urge him onward. He moved faster, harder, her own body flowing into his rhythm like liquid, until she leaned into his ear and said, “I’m coming,” in a shattered whisper. She grabbed a pillow and clamped it down over her own face, stifling a scream she couldn’t seem to hold in. Cas pulled out at the last second and came into the sheets, gasping and shaking. When he’d finished, he saw that he’d spilled a little onto her thigh in the process, and felt ashamed until she followed his eyes to it and gave him a wicked smile.

            “Too bad I can’t leave it there,” she said. “Go home smelling like you.” She grabbed a corner of the sheet and wiped it off, then started to reassemble her clothes. “Damn,” she said, tracing her hands down Cas’s back, through the furrows he could feel in his skin. “I really did a number on you. Good thing _you_ don’t have to go home to someone.” It was the second time she’d mentioned going home, and something about it made him slightly queasy, though he couldn’t tell if it was guilt or jealousy.

            They straightened their clothes and hair in the mirror the best they could. There couldn’t be anything done about her now completely absent lipstick, except to hope that her husband just wouldn’t notice. “I’m gonna leave first. Wait awhile before you come down,” she said. Cas nodded. She bit her lip and looked away. “We probably shouldn’t talk again tonight.” He nodded again, trying to ignore the sinking in his stomach. She reached into his pocket and grabbed his phone, typing a series of digits into it before she handed it back. “Call me if you want to see me again,” she said. “I’d like that.”

            As she disappeared through the door, he scanned the screen of his phone, and the name she’d typed next to the number. _Meg._ He knew he couldn’t call. They had done a terrible thing, and he needed to put it behind him. But somehow, he couldn’t bring himself to delete the number.


	2. Chapter 2

           He didn’t call her, not for several weeks, not even when he lost count of the number of times he woke up twisted in sweat-soaked sheets, thinking of her skin on his body and her breath in his ear, their quiet guilty passion making a mess of a stranger’s sheets. He didn’t even call when he started to feel the ache under the arousal when he thought of her, to realize that it wasn’t just about the sex, there was something about her that drew him to her. It didn’t matter if there was. She was somebody else’s wife.

            He didn’t actually mean to call at all. When he did, it was because his shifting weight bumped the right combination of buttons on his phone, and he heard a distant ringing coming from his pocket. Fishing out the phone, he was horrified to see that, of all the numbers he could have accidentally dialed, he’d dialed hers. Then the ringing broke and he heard that familiar honeyed rasp. “Hello?”

            Slapping the phone to his ear, Cas stuttered out, “Meg.”

            Her voice shifted into an unnaturally cheerful tone. “Oh, shoot, I forgot all about that appointment!” she said. “Yes, of course, I’m on my way. I just have to stop at West Side Market on the way, so I might be a few minutes late, but I’ll be there.” She hung up.

            It took Cas a moment to understand what had happened. Her husband must have been with her. She was speaking in code. Or at least, some part of him stupidly hoped she was; she could have just been making up an excuse to hang up. But then, why would she use one that would mean leaving the house? And why would she name one specific place? _Just leave it alone, Cas,_ he told himself. But something he insisted on calling curiosity had him climbing into his car and driving toward the market only a few minutes later.

            She was there. Standing outside, dressed far more casually than she had been the previous night, in jeans and a T-shirt that still hugged her curves in a way that made him think things he wished he didn’t, her hair loose around her shoulders, her hands shoved deep in her pockets. He parked and walked over to her. “There’s a café inside,” she said. “Coffee?” Cas nodded.

            They sat at a small table in the farthest, darkest corner. After taking her first sip from her mug and thunking it down, Meg put her hands on the table between them. “We got married young,” she said, before Cas had said anything at all. “At that point, I’m not sure how much I wasn’t just flattered to be asked. Prom king and queen, believe it or not- ” she made a face “- and us getting married was supposed to be the next big thing. The perfect crowning achievement. But I suck at being a trophy wife. I don’t fit in the neat little wife slot he carved out while he was building his career and his perfect life. I want things he can’t possibly give me. And I’m not even sure I know what those things are yet.” Cas nodded, waiting. “Once he figured out I wasn’t his perfect Barbie doll, he just started ignoring me, except when he wants something. Sex, or validation, or someone to blame everything on that doesn’t go right. That night at the party, after he’d finished making a big point of showing me off to everybody, I don’t think he even noticed I was gone.”

            Cas pictured the tall blond man standing in an audience of partiers, obliviously entertaining them, at the moment Cas was in the same house fucking his wife. He closed his eyes, trying to make the thought go away, but it continued to hover in the back of his mind.

            “That was the first time I did that,” Meg said. “I need you to know that. I came close once – there was a guy I kinda liked, a guy I worked with. I kissed him. I thought about sleeping with him, but I never crossed that line. I even felt guilty as hell about the kiss.” She swallowed and looked down. “I just don’t want you to think I’m the kind of person who just… _does_ things like that.”

            Cas started, thinking of all the times since that night he’d thought the same words about himself. All the times he’d tried to convince himself that somehow this was different; he’d done this thing, this awful thing, but he wasn’t the kind of person who did.

            He reached out and covered Meg’s hand with his own. “I get it,” he said. “It’s okay.” She gave him a tiny smile, and he felt his gut twist just a little. “How much time do we have?” he blurted suddenly.

            She shook her head. “Not long. But…” she looked away, breathing almost too evenly, as if she were trying to regulate it. “He works swing shift,” she said finally. “He’ll leave in a couple of hours, and be gone till after midnight. Maybe you could come by then?” Cas must have looked as shocked as he felt, because she quickly added, “We can just talk. Nothing else has to happen. I just really like talking to you.”

            “Me too,” he admitted. She wrote an address on a napkin and slid it over to him. He tucked it in his pocket, next to the phone she’d put her number in. But this time, he didn’t bother telling himself he would ignore it.


	3. Chapter 3

            Cas waited an extra hour, then another one, just to be sure there would be no chance the blond man wouldn’t be gone. He started to change into something nicer, then shook his head and instead put on his rattiest jeans and a faded T-shirt with a mustard stain. He was not going to give anyone any ideas, not even himself.

            He drove to the address on the napkin and parked across the street, surveying the apartment building as if he could tell from outside whether Meg was really home alone. Finally he slipped out of his car and into the front door, climbing the back stairs to the apartment number written on the napkin. 4B. He knocked. She answered.

            She was wearing the same thing she had been at the market, and looked surprised to see him. “Did I… come at a bad time?” he asked, hearing the edge of panic in his voice and hoping she didn’t.

            “No, no, it’s not bad at all. Come in.” She swung the door wide open, and his breathing relaxed. “I just wasn’t expecting you. I mean, it took you so long to call me.”

            Cas looked down and ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I’m sorry, I just…”

            “No reason to apologize. I get it. We were supposed to go back to our lives and never speak of it. Then maybe we wouldn’t be the bad, bad people we are, right?” There was something in her voice that might have been laughter, might have been tears. Cas thought it entirely possible that it was both.

            He followed her gesture to a couch inside the apartment. The place was nice, but sterile, everything clearly chosen for aesthetic rather than comfort, and, Cas suspected, none of it chosen by Meg herself. He sat on the attractive but uncomfortable couch and watched her lower her own body beside him.

            “Do you want some wine or something?” she asked him. He shook his head. “Whiskey?”

            “Actually, yeah.” She laughed and got up, taking the bottle out of the cabinet. She picked up two glasses, too, then seemed to change her mind and set them back down, returning only with the bottle. She unscrewed the cap and took a swig, then extended the bottle to Cas. “Your turn.”  
            He gulped down a mouthful of his own. “This seems more your speed than coffee.”

            “How do you know? You just met me. I could be, like, one of those caffeine-junkie soccer moms who needs to mainline espresso just to function in the morning.”

            “Are you?”

            “God no. I hate soccer.”

            In spite of himself, Cas laughed.

            “So what’s your story?” Meg asked, gulping from the bottle again and handing it back.

            “My story?”  
            “I told you mine. All the sordid details of how I became an adulteress. Now I wanna hear how you got here.”

            “Well,” Cas said, swigging down a bigger mouthful than before, shaking his head at the burn of it. “ _I’m_ not adultering anyone.”

            “Cuckolding someone, then, aren’t you?”

            “You said he was a dick.”

            “I did. And every time you meet a guy you think is a dick, do you fuck his wife?” Meg was barely finished with her swig, and swatted Cas’s hand, giggling, as he tried to grab the bottle.

            “I need this to answer that,” he said, holding it aloft once he’d finally wrested it from her. He took another drink, but he knew the story she wanted to hear wasn’t there. “I don’t have a story,” he said. “I guess that makes me worse than you. I’m just a guy, who’s had a couple of things with girls that didn’t work out, and I don’t like parties, and I meet the most incredible girl at one and it’s almost enough to change my mind, and she’s married. So I… guess I… let myself forget that for a night.”

            Meg still hadn’t taken her drink; she was staring at Cas, the bottle held midway between her mouth and the coffee table. She lowered it instead of raised it, let it clank down on the table and leaned toward him. His body moved by instinct to meet her halfway in a soft but insistent kiss, his hands reaching out and pulling her down to him, on top of him as he lay back on the uncomfortable attractive couch. In moments, his hands were up her shirt and one of hers was between his legs, massaging the hardening bulge in his jeans. Soon enough both of their shirts were on the floor and Cas couldn’t have said who took whose off, but it didn’t matter, they were gone. Still kissing and touching, they rolled to the side, where Cas started in on the buttons of her jeans. She breathed in sharply and, her tough-girl voice tossed aside like their discarded clothing, whimpered, “Yes, yes, _please_.”

            When their shirts and jeans were a tangle on the floor, she rose to her feet, pulling him with her, leading him through a half-open door into the bedroom. They made quick work of their underwear and fell, wrestling, onto a big bed piled with sleek and impersonal blankets. Lying on the bed, completely naked and aroused on the silky luxurious sheets, Cas felt suddenly grounded for a moment. This was really going to happen again, and worse, it was going to happen _here_ , in the bed she shared with her _husband._  The man whose face smiled next to hers from a frame sitting on the nightstand. Cas felt the man’s eyes burning into him as Meg straddled him and licked his neck, scraping her teeth along his collarbone as her hands swam over his chest. They rolled over in the bed, kissing and touching, teasing and playing, hands and mouths all over each other, blurring into each other. He bent over her and kissed her forehead as her legs spread and his whole lower torso dropped into the space between them. He could feel the heat pooling between her thighs and knew they were too far gone, there was no stopping now. In a heartbeat, she was wrapping her legs around his waist and he was sliding deep inside her.

            “Oh God, don’t stop,” she whispered as they moved together. He took in every movement, every moan and cry and shuddering gasp that she didn’t bother to try to smother this time. She hooked her hands through the gaps in the headboard and used it to arch her body upward, like she was trying to push herself even closer to him. Then she fell back again, her nails in his back, her heels pushing on his ass, and as he felt her coming completely undone his eyes drifted back to the picture, locked eyes with the smiling man he’d never met. He wanted to look away but couldn’t, kept perfect eye contact as the man’s wife screamed and writhed under him, and broke it only when his eyes closed for his own climax that splattered the fancy sheets and both of their bodies. _Bless me, for I have sinned._ The words from his childhood came back to him as they lay in her defiled marriage bed, holding each other and shaking as they came down.

            “I don’t want you to leave,” she said, gliding a finger down his sweat-soaked chest, “but you should. He’ll be home soon, and I need to clean up before he gets here.”

            Cas nodded and sleepily rose from the bed, shrugging himself back into his clothes as Meg stripped the sheets from the bed and climbed into the shower. “I’ll call you,” he shouted to her over the pounding of the water, knowing, despite his shame, that he meant it this time.

            “You’d better,” he heard her reply, as he slipped out the door.


	4. Chapter 4

           Knowing now the hours Meg’s husband worked, he waited until that time to call her again. This made the act of calling her seem even more scandalous, even when they didn’t talk about anything illicit. Which they didn’t, at first. Their talk was more like the one they’d had that first night on the porch, before this whole thing had started to feel like a runaway train they couldn’t stop. Meg talked about her childhood, about a brother she hadn’t mentioned and a difficult relationship with their father. Cas told Meg about his two friends who were like brothers to him, sometimes annoyingly so, but the closest thing to family he had.

            Finally, Cas gulped a breath and said, “I’d really like to see you again.”

            “Oh, me too, believe me,” she answered. “This is a pretty bad week, though.”

            “Oh.”

            “You sound disappointed.”

            “Oh, it’s nothing, it’s just… tomorrow’s my birthday.” He wasn’t going to mention it; he kept the date secret from most of the people he knew because he hated parties and he hated people making a big fuss over him. In that moment, though, he realized he wouldn’t have minded spending it with her.

            “Well, in that case…” her tone became playful, drifting off as if she were thinking. “Ok. Meet me at lunch time, two blocks from my place. We’ll celebrate.”

            True to her word, when he drove up at noon to the intersection she’d named, she was waiting for him on the corner. She hopped into the passenger side and directed him around the corner, into a tight alley between two buildings. He shifted into park, and she raised an eyebrow and jerked her head in the direction of the back seat.

            They climbed in, and Meg sat in Cas’s lap, planting tiny kisses along his neck, biting the corner of his ear. “You’re so good to me,” she said. “I want to give you a little present.”

            Cas held his breath while she slowly, deliberately unbuckled his pants. At her prompting, he lifted his hips, and she pulled them down to his ankles and knelt between his thighs. His cock was hard and flushed, a bead of liquid leaking from the tip, which she leaned forward and licked off. Smirking at his surprised gasp when her tongue made contact, she wrapped her lips around his head, stroking lightly along the full length of him. He tangled a hand in her hair, and she groaned in appreciation, creating a vibration that made his whole body spasm. Inch by inch, she took more of him into her mouth with each stroke, until he felt his head hit the back of her throat. He was losing control, tugging at her hair, burying his hands deeper in the roots. The pressure was building and he struggled to find words that weren’t the involuntary blasphemies that kept coming out with his groans of pleasure. “Oh, fuck,” he struggled out, “can I…”

            She nodded her head slightly without stopping what she was doing, and made an “Mm-hm” sound that sent that vibration shooting through him again. That did it. He was shuddering, emptying, flooding her mouth. She lifted her liquid brown eyes and looked straight at him as she swallowed it, keeping her mouth on him until his release was finished. Then, she slid her mouth off of his spent and softening cock, kissing the inside of his thigh, climbing back up onto the seat beside him to kiss him open-mouthed on the lips, let him taste the salty bitterness he’d left on her tongue.

            Then her head lowered to his shoulder, and for a moment they just sat there, lacing their fingers together on the seat between them. “I have to get back,” Meg said, her voice heavy with regret.

            Cas nodded. “What did you tell him you were doing?” He jerked his head in the direction of Meg’s apartment building.

            “I told him I was going for a walk. I said I needed some fresh air.” She dissolved into giggles as she said it, then suddenly sobered. “We are horrible people, aren’t we?”

            “No,” Cas said. “I don’t think so. I mean, we’re doing horrible things, but we’re not – at least, you’re not. I know that much.”

            “I want so much to believe you,” she said sadly, leaning in for one last kiss before she climbed through the heavy steel door and let it clang shut behind her as she walked away.


	5. Chapter 5

           It was almost too easy to get caught up in each other, but a close call on Meg’s next free night made them realize they were going to need to be more discreet. They were just finishing up when Meg’s husband called to let her know he was coming home from work early. She kept her cool as she urged Cas to leave so she could get rid of the evidence, but when they spoke again a few days later, she was noticeably shaken. “What if he hadn’t called?” she said. “He only did because he wanted to know if we still needed milk.”

            Cas felt a tightening in his chest, but he made himself say the words. “Do you want to stop seeing me?”

            “No.”

            “Then we’ll find a way.”

            They had a few trysts at Cas’s place, when his obnoxious roommate wasn’t around. A few in a motel in the farthest corner of town from Meg’s apartment and her husband’s work. Once, for lack of a better option, they used the back seat of Cas’s car, parked as inconspicuously as possible, the windows steamed and the seats strewn with discarded clothing. That night, while she lay directly on top of him because there wasn’t room to lie anywhere else, his arms wrapped around her as their breathing slowly evened, she said, “Even if we weren’t doing what we’ve been doing, I would still do whatever I had to for you to be in my life. You’re the best friend I’ve got right now.”

            Another night, in a shabby rented bed, he finally asked her, “Why haven’t you just left him?”

            She sighed. “There’s nowhere for me to go. I don’t have family or friends who would help me. I don’t make anywhere near the money he does, and even if I did, it all goes into joint accounts. He’d notice if I tried to keep some aside. There’s really no way out.” She rolled up on one arm, turning to face him. “Anyway, he wasn’t doing anything bad enough to make me feel like I had to. Until I met you, there was no reason not to just keep pushing through it.”

            “And now?”

            “Now I know what I’m missing.” She fell back onto her back. “It doesn’t change anything, though.” She signaled that she was done talking by reaching under the sheets and stroking him until he was hard again, pulling him down for another round.

            One day, he got a call from her number, and when he answered, she spoke to him in her unnaturally perky tone. “I was just calling to see if my prescription was ready for pick-up,” she said.

            “Meg?”

            “It is? Oh, great, I’ll be right over. The pharmacy on 12th Street, right?”

            “I’ll be there,” he whispered.

            She met him outside the pharmacy with a sly grin on her face. “Guess what I found out today?” she said, as she pulled him into the alley beside it.

            “What?”

            “He’s going out of town for business,” she said. “I’ve got a few days all to myself in an empty apartment…” she raised her eyebrow as she trailed off.

            “Meg…”

            “One night, at least,” she begged. “Spend one whole night making love to me, with nobody to interrupt us and no alarms going off telling us we have to go. Just let me pretend, just for one night, it could really be like that for us.”

            He leaned in and kissed her. “Okay.”

            The night her husband left town, she called him and spoke to him in her real voice. “Come over,” she said. She didn’t need to say anything else.

            He got there in record time, not bothering to check his surroundings. For once, it almost didn’t feel like sneaking around.

            She answered the door wearing a complicated lacy lingerie thing, the kind of thing that only gets brought out for special occasions. He was certain she hadn’t bought it for him, but in this moment, it didn’t matter. He was a special occasion.

            That night, they didn’t even make it to the bedroom. In a move more brazen than he would have thought himself capable of, Cas lifted Meg right onto the kitchen table and managed to dislocate enough of her lacy trappings to bury his face between her legs. Later, she rode him on the uncomfortable attractive couch, and still later he pressed her up against the glass in the shower, their bodies slick with soap as he slid in and out, but they didn’t find their way into the big bed until they were spent and sore, wanting only to drape their bodies over each other and go to sleep.

            In the morning, she woke him up with her mouth wandering all over his body, taunting him almost to the point of pain, but refused to give him release until they both called in from work. They stayed in bed all day, ordering a pizza when they got hungry and devouring it before turning their appetites back on each other, their mouths slippery with grease when they pressed them back together. They slept in the afternoon, even spent a few hours curled together watching an old movie on the sleek but impersonal flat-screen TV mounted on the wall of the sleek but impersonal bedroom. When night was setting in, Meg wrapped herself around Cas and whispered, “Stay.” So he did.


	6. Chapter 6

           The next morning, Cas gave Meg one last, long kiss before breaking the fantasy by removing himself and the rest of the incriminating evidence from the apartment. There was something about the way he watched Meg put the place and herself back into the condition in which her husband had left them that gave him a sour twist in the pit of his stomach. With a few days entirely to themselves, it had been easy to forget how wrong what they were doing was. He had come into the apartment feeling like a lover, but he left it feeling like a thief.

            Things, after that, went back to normal, or as normal as they could be considering the circumstances. Cas and Meg saw each other when they could, keeping close track of time, whispering over phone lines and deleting messages. When he got a phone call from her in the middle of the day, just over two months after their time of playing house, he answered expecting to hear the perky voice tell him about an errand somewhere. Instead, he heard Meg’s real voice, flat and serious. “I need to see you right now,” she said.

            It had been a few weeks since they’d been able to get together, and Cas had been trying to keep his longing at bay. He smiled into the receiver, playfully answering, “Miss me that much, huh?”

            Meg’s voice stayed serious. “Cas, I really need to talk to you.”

            They met over cups of coffee again, but in a different shop this time. They tried to make a point of not going to the same place together twice. Meg was looking down and fidgeting with the handle of her cup, refusing to meet Cas’s eye. Cas felt sick. It was over, finally, he was sure of it. He’d always known this was coming, sooner or later.

            “Meg, what’s wrong?” he said finally, trying to keep the panic out of his voice. Watching her, all he could think were of all the tiny things he loved about being with her – the smell of her hair, the crinkle of her eyes when she smiled, the way she dissolved into giggles whenever he kissed that particular place right behind her ear. All those things he was never going to get to experience again. He reached over and covered her restless hand, and she finally looked up into his face.

            “I just came from the doctor,” she said. “Cas, I’m pregnant.”

            So there it was, then. Cas felt the stone in his gut finally drop. Sleeping around as a married woman was one thing; as a mother, something else entirely. He hated it, but he understood.

            “So you’re telling me this because you need to go back to him and raise your kid together?” he said, trying to at least spare her having to say it. He couldn’t stand the pain he was seeing in her face.

            Meg bit her lip, shook her head. “No. I’m telling you this because there’s a pretty good chance it’s yours.”

            Cas stared at her, feeling his jaw actually drop. Somehow, he hadn’t considered that possibility. Sure, they hadn’t been as careful as they could have been, at first, when nothing was really planned, but as they’d settled into their routine of actively sneaking around, they’d gotten better about it. Maybe not perfect, but better, and anyway somehow he just hadn’t thought he counted enough for what she was saying to be true.

            Meg reached into her purse and pulled out a pocket calendar, two dates circled on it in red. “The doctor gave me this,” she said. She pointed to the later date. “This is my due date. And this,” she pointed at the earlier date, “is when she figures I got pregnant.”

            Cas stared at the dates swimming around on the paper for a moment until it made sense to him. The first circled day was smack in the middle of the week that Meg’s husband went out of town.

            “There’s a margin of error, of course,” she said. “Enough I can convince him without breaking a sweat. And enough that I can’t tell you with a hundred percent certainty either.” Again, she wouldn’t look at him. Cas felt another pang when he realized the implication, and immediately squashed it. Of _course_ she was still sleeping with her husband, too. He didn’t get to feel hurt in this situation.  “But I don’t think she’s wrong,” Meg said. “I don’t know, I just have a feeling. You just _know_ these things.”

            Cas leaned over the table, draped his arm over Meg’s shoulder and lifted her face to his as she started to cry. “Baby, baby, it’s okay,” he murmured, even though he had no idea how this could possibly be okay.

            “What am I going to do?” she sniffled.

            “You have options.”

            “I do. I could stay with him, tell him the kid’s for sure his, and try to be happy. I could still get rid of it, and pretend this never happened.”

            “He doesn’t know?”

            She shook her head. “Maybe suspects, but I could say it was a false alarm.” She wiped her nose on her sleeve and looked up at Cas again. “If I could say for sure you were the father, would you run away with me?”

            Cas was thinking, in that moment, that he would even if she couldn’t, but he didn’t have a chance to say it. “Never mind, don’t answer that.”

            He rose to his feet, pulling Meg with him, and hugged her, awkwardly, the table between them. “Hey,” he said. “No matter what happens, no matter what you decide to do, you’re not gonna lose me, okay? Not unless you want to.” He felt Meg’s damp face nodding into his chest. It was the first thing he’d ever promised her. Their relationship wasn’t the kind built for promises. But he was determined to keep it.


	7. Chapter 7

             They saw each other one more time after Meg confessed her pregnancy, in the motel, Cas’s car parked around the corner just in case. When Meg was wearing only her underwear, Cas knelt next to her, palming the slight bulge of her belly under the elastic of her underwear. “I can see it,” he said, pressing a kiss to her convex skin.

            “Stop it,” Meg said, swatting at him.

            As she moved on him in the motel bed, he watched every curve of her body as the sweat dripped down and she trembled and shook, marveling at how slightly everything was different, yet how completely. “ _Mine,_ ” he whispered, too low for Meg to hear him, caressing her belly slyly on the way to somewhere she’d find more interesting. He wasn’t sure if he was talking about the baby, or about Meg.

            When they exchanged guilty good-bye kisses and gathered up their clothes, Cas didn’t know it would be several weeks before he heard from her again.

            When he did, it was another phone call in her regular voice, at a time when he wouldn’t have expected her to be free to make one.

            “Are you still…” he started.

            “Knocked up? Yeah.”

            “Does he know yet?”

            There was a deep inhalation on the other line. “He knows, Cas.” She paused. “He knows everything.”

            “Everything?”

            “Well, I spared him some of the gory details, but yeah.”

            Cas’s breath caught in his throat. “What happened?”

            “Let’s just say he saw something he wasn’t supposed to see. He confronted me, and… I may be a cheater, Cas, but I’m not a liar. At least, not when you have the guts to ask me point-blank to my face. I answered everything he asked, and so help me I told the truth.” He heard her breath break, but she kept going. “He knows I cheated on him. He knows it was more than just once. He knows I brought you in our house, had sex with you in our bed. And he knows I don’t think the baby’s his.”

            “Damn.” Cas couldn’t think of anything else to say.

            “I thought he was gonna hit me. He stepped towards me… then he just turned away. He told me he was going for a drive, and walked out. I _hurt_ him, Cas. I didn’t even know I could do that.”

            “He’s hurt you, too.”

            “I know he has. But not like this.”

            “So he’s still gone?”

            Silence. “No, he came back.”

            Cas waited.

            “He said he’d try to work it out if I wanted to. I thought he was crazy at first. I mean, what kind of guy stays with his wife and raises the guy’s kid she was screwing behind his back? Who _does_ that?”

            “You should give him a chance,” Cas said finally.

            “Cas, what the fuck?”

            “I’m not gonna break up your marriage. Not when he’s that willing to make it work. Not even if I love you.”

            The line was silent for a long time. “What was that?” she finally said.

            “Meg…”

            “Look, I did try, okay? That’s why you haven’t heard from me. I’ve been trying to work it out, and I can’t, okay? I don’t know if he loves me. I guess he does, in his way. I guess in my way maybe I love him too. And maybe part of why he’s not leaving is because he doesn’t want the embarrassment, and it would be easier to sweep it all under the rug, and that’s just like him too. And I could keep doing that for the rest of my life. I’m good at it by now.” She sighed. “But I don’t want to. I left. I might not have money, or anywhere to go, but it’s what I had to do and I don’t regret it. It’s not about him. It’s not even about you. I just need to be honest for once in my fucking life.”

            “Meg, where are you? I’ll come get you.”

            “No, don’t. I’m sorry. But please don’t.”

            The line went dead.


	8. Chapter 8

            Cas drove around all night looking for Meg. He went to every place they’d ever been together, even though he knew it was pointless. If she didn’t want him to find her, the last place she’d go is somewhere he’d think to look. Besides, they’d always had that rule: never in the same place twice.

            The only exception was the motel, and when he’d finally accepted he wasn’t going to find her, he went there alone, checked himself into a room. He needed sleep, and he couldn’t stand the thought of going back to his apartment, to his bad roommate and his small, dull, cluttered life without her in it. He stretched out on the bed, and in this room with its familiar roadworn smell and sheets that were thin and just soft enough to be comfortable, he could almost imagine she was on the other side of the bed, indulging in a light sleep before they had to get her home. He reached out an arm, and it swam in the empty sheets, still bound tightly to the bed on what would have been her side.

            The hardest part was, he knew he wasn’t supposed to miss her. He wasn’t allowed that. She never should have been with him in the first place. When someone betrays you, you always have somewhere to run for comfort. But when you help someone betray someone else, and get hurt in the process, most people agree it serves you right. Hell, Cas himself agreed. It didn’t make it hurt any less.

            He lived like that for three days, drinking and sleeping and missing someone who was never his in the first place. Finally he decided it was time to go home, and he checked out and packed up his car. As he was sliding behind the wheel, the text alert on his phone buzzed. As he dragged the phone from his pocket, Meg’s name popped onto the screen.

            The message was simple, so simple he almost wondered if they were back to secret code. It only said, WEST SIDE MARKET CAFÉ.

            He drove there right away, not even stopping at his apartment to shave or change. Meg wasn’t outside. He almost drove away, imagining it all a mistake, but he forced himself to park and go inside. Meg was sitting at the same table they’d sat at the first time they’d met there, in the same seat, holding a coffee cup with the exact same drink in it. She was wearing similar clothing, but the curve of her abdomen was more prominent, impossible to ignore now. She looked up as he walked toward her. “Cas.”

            “Meg.” He couldn’t help himself; he walked straight to her side of the table and pulled her into a tight hug. She rose with him and hugged back, holding to him as if she were afraid to let go. Finally they parted and sank into their seats opposite each other. Cas looked down and noticed Meg had already ordered him a drink. The exact same one he’d had the first time they’d met there.

            “What is this?” he asked, stirring it with his finger.

            “Coffee?”

            “I mean, why here?”

            “Because going somewhere we haven’t been would be like continuing the lies. I couldn’t do that anymore. If I’m gonna see you, it’s gotta be honest this time.”

            Cas nodded. “Did you go back?” he asked.

            “No. I filed divorce papers. I’m staying in the women’s shelter for now, but I should have enough saved up for a place soon.” She leaned closer. “You look like shit,” she remarked.

            Cas looked at the ground, ran his hand through his hair. “I was trying not to be self-destructive over losing you,” he said. “I failed for a few days, but I was just about to get better, I swear.”

            “Did you mean what you said?”

            “What I said when?”

            “You said you loved me.”

            “I did.”

            “Say it, or mean it?”

            “Both.”

            She placed a hand on her belly and sighed, staring down. “What would we tell this kid, Cas?”

            “What do you mean?”

            “About why they’re here. About who we are. How could they not hate us?”

            Cas thought for a moment, then reached out and rested his own hand over Meg’s hand, over her belly. “We tell them,” he said, “people fuck up. Sometimes they do awful things. And maybe they shouldn’t get second chances, but sometimes, they do anyway. We tell them we did an awful thing, but we got a second chance. A beautiful one. And they’re it.”

            They sat like that until the coffee got cold, and Meg ordered them another round of the exact same thing they’d had before, in the exact same place they’d sat before, in a town where it was too easy to know everyone’s secrets but for once, finally, they didn’t have any to keep.


End file.
